


Thank-you For Forever

by UlternateFreak



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship/Love, Gay, Gay Peter Parker, Harley Keener & Peter Parker Friendship, Harley Keener Needs a Hug, Human/Vampire Relationship, Lost Love, M/M, Mortal Peter Parker, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Harley Keener, Sad Ending, Sad Peter Parker, Sad and Sweet, Time Is The Enemy, Time Skips, Tragic Romance, True Love, Vampire Bites, Vampire Harley Keener
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 11:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30054618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UlternateFreak/pseuds/UlternateFreak
Summary: Peter is eleven when he meets a vampire for the first time in his life. The only vampire, one could argue - but then, at eleven - surely the first of many because why wouldn't he come to meet others outside of the first?Or, a love-story told in snippets: where time is the enemy, but forever is the promise.
Relationships: Ben Parker & May Parker (Spider-Man), Harley Keener & Peter Parker, Harley Keener/Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker & Gwen Stacy
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	Thank-you For Forever

Peter is eleven when he meets a vampire for the first time in his life. The only vampire, one could argue - but then, at eleven - surely the first of many because why wouldn't he come to meet others outside of the first?

"Who are you?" He asks the creature - outwardly gawking at the way the other had hovered mid-air, feet not so much dangling - but simply resting in a naturally propped up fashion. As if lounging - as one might do when draped within a chair.  
  
"Who are you?" The vampire asks in turn, clearly held in reserve - but eying the other as much as the mortal was openly doing to him.

And Peter, feeling all the more braver than a preteen might have the right to, had stood with his bare toes to the floorboards then.

"My name is Peter," he thusly greets - tongue briefly lapping to the open slot of where his front tooth had fallen out the week before, "Parker."

"Harley," Harley had then greeted, eyes lapsing as they had turned to gauge the moonlight - glimpsing back to the dark alleyway in which he had most likely flown up from. And the creature - _Harley_ \- looked no older than Peter himself, looking much like any other naturally human birthed child - with the only amissed sign of otherness being the amount of red circulating about his irises.

"Now who are you exactly?"

"I already said," Peter answers with a tilt to his words.

"No," Harley then corrects, a twist to his neck as he shot the boy an offhanded look - his hands seeming to fist together within the rags of his crimson hoodie as he thusly turned to face him, "the mortals here don't have an offspring-"

"I'm staying with my Uncle Ben."

The other openly hums to the simple reasoning, again looking to the window before dwindling down and onto the floor completely. "I haven't time to look for another place to rest," he then sighs - words seeming to echo to himself rather than to the eleven year old child - though - "may I stay?"

"Here?" Peter asks.

"Yes. I usually fly into this vacant room when in the city - and you hardly seem much of a threat for a mortal."

"I'm not," he thusly affirms - inching ever so delicately as he then clasped his hands together in forced prayer - "please stay."

...

  
  
Peter is eleven and a half, and his visits to Uncle Ben's apartment are far more frequent than before.

He's adamantly insistent really - with the want to see his othered friend, who showed periodically - a near must by the time Summer had arrived. Most weekends, Peter isn't present to properly greet him - though he's left many notes for Harley, with Harley - in turn - learning to leave things for him.

"I got whatever this thing is," Peter says to Harley upon a mutual meeting, fishing into his pockets for a charcoal looking piece of rock.

"You haven't opened it?" Harley asks.

"Opened it?"

"Yes," he nods - scoring about the room for a moment before idly floating down besides Peter's spot on the bed. His smell coming in second - which remained a bizarre mixture of what Peter could only describe as a musky cold temperament masked by a slight aroma of baby's-breath and roses.

Harley, taking hold of the rock, had then rolled it effortlessly between his palms before forcing the two halves apart.

"Its what's inside that matters," he had then continued, tossing a single half to Peter for inspection.

"Crystals-!"

...

Peter is twelve when his parents pass away - his stay with Uncle Ben now a permanent staple in Queens. The once guest room thusly given to him - a shelter of sorts that houses his many hysterical fits.

Slowly, the bedroom begins to fill with relics of his past life - gathered and concealed between the things that are new and equally hated for their lack of sentimental worth.

"-whats wrong, Peter?" Harley asks in earnest - his slipping into the room met with wretched sobs that seem to reach out into the deep recesses of the shadows.

They're easily unmistakable to his ears - and reekingly traumatic by way of stench.

Tears, Harley had told him once - smelt of a particular nature - a strange concoction of human strife and spirit that came to manifest as a sickly-sweet type of odor.

"Harley-" Peter then sobs, sitting up - the duvet of his bed draping about his bare shoulders - swallowing the petite boy whose face had been tragically splotched with tears and mucus mixed about his chin.

And without little other warning than that, the boy had quickly rushed to his side, pulling him in close - essentially crying into the vampires shoulder with trembling hands that had gripped into his sides.

"Mom and dad-" he continues between the choked sobs, his throat constricting with each continuous word, "they're dead - they're d-dead."

It had taken a moment before Harley had been truly capable of grasping the idea of death and its actual finality. He had only ever glanced upon the parents in question a handful of times - though to know that he would never come to ever see them again seemed...odd.

He was relatively young in that sense. Only of fourteen years - fourteen being as every bit of human leveled in age as any other.

_"Were you born then?" Peter had asked once before. "Or did you-?"_

_"From birth," he had said, "and I shall age until my 25th year. Then - eternal life."_

_"You'll get to see a lot of life then."_

The comment then, though said in awe and wonder at the time had sat just as heavy within the vampires nonexistent heart as it did now. Especially as he had clung to the younger, his nostrils flaring against the stink of his sorrow - but defiant in his yearnings to ignore it in favor of sheltering the other from that very same uncaring death that had taken his parents.

...

Peter is thirteen when Harley takes him flying for the first time - the months leading up to then being a crash course of learning how to properly balance the others weight with his own. They had flown about his room countless times before then, falling in succession likewise - and once breaking a mirror that Ben had bought for his bedroom.

_"Is everything alright?" Uncle Ben's wife had asked of the boy, peeping her head through the doorway after having given a resoundingly light knock to announce her intrusion._

_"Yeah," Peter had nodded, awkwardly standing in the center of his bedroom - hands clasped behind his back as if caught doing something he hadn't been permitted to do. Which, in all fairness, he technically had been._

_The woman had hovered for several breaths then, adamantly staring at him - as if a means to find a trace of something she couldn't quite pinpoint herself._

_Thankfully she had slipped off though - a forced smile given as she had gone. The mirror in question shattered but essentially hidden from her view._

_"She your auntie?"_

_"Yeah," Peter had told him upon his crawling out from beneath his bed. His eyes still in focus to where she had been standing. "She's...strange."_

_"How so?"_

_"She doesn't talk much."_

Their first flight had taken them to the Queensboro Bridge, where Harley had dropped Peter onto a beam - laughing as he had circled about him.

"Not funny," Peter chastises, the truth told in chattered teeth but given with a blissfully wild edge.

"That's because you can't see your own face-"

"J-just don't let me fall."

"Never," Harley assures, fangs on display as he had turned to stare down the waters. The moment a drawn line of security that Peter completely comprehends - his fingers lacing back together with Harley's own as he perched onto his heels, teetering over the edge and out from beneath the cold metal.

"Now hold tight-"

...

  
  
Peter is fourteen when he manages to do the unthinkable. His face creening over to surprise the vampire whos laying down besides him.

The two had been sharing the floor for the past hour - with Peter on his front, textbook tossed open before him. Harley, all the while, staring up at his ceiling - completely contented in the silence distilled between them. Awaiting for Peter's studies to end, perhaps in the hopes to fly once more - or to simply coerce the other into some proper interactions.

"What?" Harley thusly asks, staring up at the mortal whose now looming over him - their faces nearly close to touching though reversed with one another.

And with his eyes aligned to the others chin, Peter had drawn his hand to Harley's mouth. His finger gently nudging his lips apart and inching towards his right fang. He stills, pressing the singular digit into the sharp tooth - fascinated and in ignorance to Harley's rooted reaction. Who, in all actuality, is simply laying there - curiosity nestled as he awaited to see what the other might possibly choose to do next.

"Sharp-" Peter then breathlessly laughs, probing still before he had decided to draw his hand back. The moment shifting for a second time - this being with even less contemplation than the first as he had leaned in further to brush his lips against the others mouth. And as before, Harley had permitted him to do so - motionless as the other had lingered into the press - his lips dead, though adamantly persistent in their strength to remain there.

"What was that for?" Harley then asks once Peter is satisfied, his face now no longer near him but reserved to the textbook as before.

And to his surprise, the boy just shrugs - not bothering to glance at him in the slightest as he continues to read his way into the Industrial Revolution.

...

  
  
Peter is fourteen and a half when Harley nearly bursts into his bedroom window - his stalling in doing so only given once he realizes that the other isn't actually present.

Flying about, he had sought the other downstairs - his curiosity leading him to peek in from the glass sliding door - finding the boy in question, sitting at the dining room table. Which hadn't been odd in and of itself, but he had been besides a blond girl - laughing as his uncle had recounted some story that Harley hadn't been paying any mind to.

The blond, unfamiliar and unremarkable in every way, had thusly situated a hand over Peter's own then - her bright blue eyes radiating in mirth as Peter's auntie had thusly screamed - startling Harley, who had quickly gathered his senses and had spiraled back into the moonless night.

"Where have you been?" Peter asks two weeks after, his attention all at once spiked when Harley had sheepishly knocked against the plane of his bedroom window.

Its late, though early as far as the vampire is concerned - their nightly routines mainly taken at odd hours of the night - so relatively, for all sense of purposes over such common practices, it is - in fact - early.

"Been busy-" he lies - which the mortal must easily see past. Else the lack of an already open window is simply a coincidence.

"May saw you-" Peter then says, eyes fixated though body unmoving from where he's currently standing with his arms crossed about his chest. "She screamed-"

"Oh-"

"Yeah _oh_ ," he repeats, "luckily they all thought it a big joke - you have to be more careful-"

"Okay," he nods.

"Okay," Peter agrees, though he still hasn't made to move - a fact easily measured upon as Harley fists at the latch himself.

"Why didn't you stay?" He then asks.

"You looked busy. Didn't want to intrude."

"You've never minded on waiting before-"

Harley shrugs - unmoved to retaliate any further. And though clearly unamused by such an answer, Peter relents and slips the lock off.

...

Peter is fifteen when Harley breaches the subject entirely. The blond girl an occasional staple that seems to come and go into life at will. Though Peter never mentions her to him. In fact - he hardly mentions anyone outside of his auntie and uncle. Answering only if asked by Harley himself, who again, hadn't deterred on the topic in the slightest till then.

"So who is _she_?" he asks once the moon has risen higher into the sky - the sounds of Peter's guardians having already drifted off into slumber heard and given. Described to Peter once as two distinctive steady beats that lightly ricochet about the apartment's foundations.

"Who?" Peter then comes to ask, sleep mused into spoken submission - his turning about more of an obligation as a fruitful yawn breezes past his lips.

Which isn't at all uncommon - for Peter is in fact mortal - and humans, as far as Harley had learned, are desperately needy for their sleep. So often than naught he had found himself situated by Peters side - his fascination in watching him slip off from this world and into the next merely a minute detail of their mutual friendship. One that is quite easily overlooked and forgotten upon by both fronts.

"That _girl_ ," he then answers into the shadows.

Peter reaches for the light besides his bed then - his body thusly sitting up as he observed his friend - who, by extension, had been mainly propped up against the wall that his bed aligned with - legs hooked and crossed beneath his torso

"You mean, Gwen?" he asks.

"Is that _her_ name?"

He nods.

"Then yes," Harley says, " _her_."

"She's a friend," Peter answers, his bed covers slipping past his chest - giving way to bare skin that Harley occasionally found himself yearning to touch. Especially as the years progressed - with the boy's body no longer awkwardly scrawny, but building definition from the basis of his genetic makeup alone. Not that Harley had ever voiced such odd fixations aloud. Rather, he had simply thought it. Deeming it an even lesser cared for detail than the fact that he observed the others sleeping habits.

"She's the daughter of one of Ben's friends," Peter then continues, "Captain Stacy-"

"A police officer," Harley infers, knowing quite well what profession Ben Parker had opted to take for a living. The job itself rather prestigious and honorable as far as Peter had described it to him.

"I think he thought we'd hit it off," the other then laughs, "which we did - but-" he stalls, that same chuckle subsiding as a bright flush had worked its way over and onto his face - his chest blossoming out, likewise, from his neck downward - "not in the way he imagined."

"Which was what exactly?" Harley asks.

"She has a girlfriend," Peter says instead of directly answering, the blush still congruent as he had shook his head, "Michelle-" he laughs again, "she goes to Midtown too-... so it was basically never going to happen."

...

Peter is sixteen when Ben Parker is gunned down in an alleyway.

Harley is actually out in the city when he hears the shot - himself having been stalking a young woman who had just left the bars. And though unknown then, he had willingly passed the site on his way to Peter's - the harsh flashes of red and blue lights a grand spectacle that had caught his attention.

Upon reaching the apartment, the boy had been in tears - and uncharacteristically wrapped about his auntie, who had clung onto her cellular phone like one would a life preserver.

Death, again, had reminded Harley that human life was fleeting...

And it hurt to know that one day - eventually - Peter himself might come to leave him.

...

  
  
Peter is sixteen and a half when he asks Liz Allen to Homecoming - or rather, the girl's close friend - Betty Brant, or another - had eluded him into asking her.

" _Eluding_ being she asked Ned," he tells Harley, himself already digging through fistfuls of different ties - some belonging to his father, and others to Ben - "thinking to double would be perfect - have you ever been to a dance?"

"No," Harley says, sitting cross-legged on his desktop.

"Right," Peter then says, "no school- okay, how about taste then - do you have that?"

Harley nods, "I eat plenty-"

"No," he says, "not - just-" he turns to him, with four different ties wrapped about his neck, each harboring a different tone and style that vaguely cross together into the shape of a noose, "which one is the best?"

Harley surveys the different fabrics, attention acutely aware of the fact that Peter is shirtless beneath the dress jacket that he's currently wearing to compare them against...

Why anyone would bother on such a small distinctive detail as a tie, he hardly knew - yet-

"That one-" he says, pointing to the dark violet variable - its coverings etched with small, nearly unnoticeable, hexagon shapes, "its...you look good with it-"

"I hate this-"

"Oh," Harley says, "then maybe that one-"

"No," Peter groans, his head suddenly lurching to drop into Harley's open lap - his hair curling into his abdomen as he then releases a secondary cry of frustration, "I don't want to do this-"

"Why not?"

"I'd rather-..." he stalls, his head digging in deeper before ultimately exhaling as he sharply rose to look away from him.

"Nevermind," he then says - back to his ties, "-I'm just...nervous."

...

  
  
Peter is seventeen when Harley catches him beneath his covers for the first time.

The horrified expression on Peter's face too damning and oddly gratifying to completely release and discard altogether. And though Harley had nearly gone, escaping back to the night in the hopes of finding some other place to rest - Peter had convinced him otherwise, his face ripe-d and forehead drenched in perspiration as he had gathered himself together.

  
"You said my name," Harley slips once they had settled. The atmosphere in the room too heavy to keep with nothing passed between them. Though perhaps he should have opted to open with another inquiry - his chosen strategy clearly in the wrong as Peter had thusly dug his face into a discarded pillow.

  
  
"You do know what I was doing, don't you?" Peter asks later into the night. Their positions the same - with Peter curled in under his covers and Harley perched by the wall, watching.

"I've seen enough mortals to know."

"Do you-?"

"It does little to bother me," he says.

"No," Peter corrects, "do you...d-do it? Can you-?"

"I suppose," Harley shrugs, "I have the same anatomy as you do - as we discovered."

"Right," Peter nods, face flushing red again. His mind likely returning to that time when his much younger self had speculated over such a specifically odd specification.

_"Can I see it?" he had once asked of him, perched onto his bottom - and preening up with inepted attention._

_"I guess-" Harley had given in, too wanting to please such a look._

Peter doesn't say anything further over the matter, though he lays awake for a long while after - his thinking just as longingly given as Harley's own before dwindling off and into the human nothingness.

...

  
  
Peter is seventeen and a half when he comes home to find Harley in his bed. His steps visibly unsettled, and face scorched unnaturally as he bids a goodnight to his auntie.

"Are you drunk?" Harley asks firstly, recognizing the signs for what they are. The characteristics of countless victims too known by then to merely overlook.

"A little," he answers in earnest, "May had to p-pick me up-"

"Why-?"

"It was - accident," he says, pulling at his hoodie and shirt. The act clumsily obscene as Harley simply watches him undress. "I'm pretty sure Flash slipped a few things into what was supposed to be...punch- May is at least u-understanding-" he takes to his jeans then, and quickly disposes of them too, leaving himself quite bare - with a pair of red briefs being his only act of modesty. "Ned is - worse-"

The stumble is quick, though Peter settles at standing by his bed instead of gathering himself up entirely - his eyes shifting to take in Harley's laxxed position. His own self lounging over the bed spread, a book readily nestled in his palms.

"What?" he asks.

"You look comfy," Peter surmises, a fond smile tainting his lips as he drags himself closer, nearly toppling over as he thusly peers down at Harley. And such a look inches dangerously close to that time he had kissed him - the same sort of misguided speculation crossing the younger boys features. This time, however, Harley had recognized the looking for what it actually was.

_Lust._

  
An emotion that was very much human - and just as disjointing-ly alarming as the act of crying.

"Peter-"

The brunette silences him with a singular kiss - this one proving less innocent - though increasingly messy with his tongue slipping past his lips and dangerously close to his fangs.

"Pete-"

"W-why are you so pretty-?" Peter asks as Harley manages to separate them - his body still encased over his, but intentions stalling for the better.

"You're intoxicated."

"-and you're hot."

...

  
  
Peter is seventeen and a half - and a day - when he wakes up to his first hangover.

His first instinct following such a feat, being to vomit over and onto the floor - awakening Harley who had drawn the bedroom curtains closed the night before.

"Its too late for this," he had chided to the boy. His words bitten though actions continuing as he had fixed Peter back together - essentially cleaning the mess and managing to tip toe past May's inquiries.

...

  
  
Peter is eighteen when he convinces Harley to meet May Parker. Properly - though without context to detail as to who and what he exactly was - _is_.

They even go as far as to slip contacts into his eyes, with his odor then hidden behind cologne - and clothes essentially borrowed from Peter's own wardrobe.

"Its nice to meet you," May greets by way of a side hug - an action he mentally prepares for due to Peter's insistence of such.

"Likewise-"

"You know," she then pauses the second after - finger now secluded and hovering out before her, "you look awfully familiar. Have we met somewhere before?"

"Probably not," Peter offers, preening as he steers Harley aside, "we'll just be up in my room-"

"Will you be staying for dinner?"

"Oh, I don't eat-"

"Meat," Peter thusly hollers, "he's a vegan-"

"Not a problem-" the woman then aids, jutting past and reaching for a loose book atop of her small coffee table, "not a problem at all - I've been meaning to try some new recipes-" she quickly flips through the pages then, her smile bright and attention determined, "here - vegan burritos - how about it?"

"Sure-" Peter answers once more, "yeah - sounds great, May-!"

Dinner goes over as well as they expect it to. With Harley tossed over the toilet bowl, and hurling everything and anything that had defiled his stomach within the last fifteen minutes.

"Food poisoning-" Peter assures carelessly through the door - his hands dragging up Harley's shoulder blades as he lurches once more.

"Are you sure?" May hollers, "it sounds terrible-"

"I'm fine," Harley then forces this time about, "no need to worry-"

  
  
"You shouldn't have tried to please her," Peter then whispers once the dramatics are over. With May having bid Harley goodbye for the evening, thinking him long gone and essentially out of the apartment.

"She seemed so happy," Harley bemoans, still holding his stomach together but managing to properly sit upright. "I couldn't..."

  
  
"You're so cute," Peter then chuckles - the press of lips light as he secured the other with his arm.

...

  
  
Peter is eighteen and a half when he finally pops the question. The two tangled together within his bedsheets - with Harley being the one half asleep. Mid-morning taking its toll but curtained and kept away from the couple tossed together.

"Do you mind when I kiss you?"

"Not usually," Harley mumbles - stirring as he rounds to burrow his front into Peter's side.

"So sometimes?"

"Didn't care for the messy one," he says, "-but the worst are when I'm trying to sleep." And though he says such, he also peeks an eye open to lazily smile up at the boy - a single fang clipped between his mouth as he does. "So why the questionnaire?"

Peter shrugs.

"No," Harley stirs again, this time to slither over and onto his shoulder, "why breech a topic to then dislodge when I ask for reason? You mortals are tedious."

"What is it?" he then asks.

"I just," Peter sighs, "...what do you think of me?"

"I think you kind," he says.

"And what of _us_? What are we exactly?"

"I thought we were bestfriends?"

"We are," Peter nods, though he's fisting the top of Harley's shirt by then, his eyes straining to stay in focus as he begins to toy about the loose strands of Harley's tussled hair. "But...I just - is that all you feel for me?"

"Feel?" Harley repeats, grimace given as he yawns into his chest, "you mortals are so queer- what sort of question is that?"

"Nevermind-"

"No," Harley says, his hand reaching to coach Peter's chin to face him again, "I didn't mean to offend. Just... - I thought my affections were clear." He pauses. "Will you stop pouting?"

"Well what _affections_ do you mean then? Can you be less cryptic for once-?"

"As if your one to speak," he snides, "but I care for you if I must say it directly. Should it please you."

"Is that all?" Peter asks.

"Well, what exactly else are you looking for here?"

"I..."

"Don't say _'forget it_ '," he then orders, "or utter a pathetic ' _nevermind'_ \- or stand up, because if you do I'll-"

Peter kisses him again. Harsher than any other time before. His hands going as far as to rake up his bare torso, shoving Harley's hoodie into the pits of his arms in order to gain access to such.

"This-" he says, "you understand what this is don't you?" He kisses his chin, "its a universal language is it not?"

He shoves at him then, his legs and body quick as he straddles the vampire - his thighs pleasantly aligning and grinding into the others hip bone . "You can't pretend that this is normal between friends-"

"I can," Harley assures after a third kiss, his own arms securely placed upon Peter's sides - keeping him upright, "because I've never had a friend before. I'm unfamiliar with your definitions - or even to your relations- but-" he swallows, "I suppose your inclination is to mean that you...you wish to be my mate."

" _Mate_ ," Peter repeats with a laugh, "why do you talk like that?"

He shrugs. "All my education is done through books, you know that-"

"You need updated courses then."

...

  
  
Peter is nineteen when he convinces Harley to have sex with him.

Though its different then he had imagined it - with the vampire beneath him - his stuttered breaths urgent as Peter enveloped him, slipping easily inside of his body with a heady and desperate cry.

_"Is that what you really want-?" He had asked of him, his face twitching in a way that had looked skittishly troubled as Peter had profusely nodded._

_"That's alright, isn't it?"_

_"I could easily hurt you, is all."_

_"I trust you."_

_"...very well," he had then decided, nodding as he had paced about the room - his hands clasped behind his back as he had come to a determined stance. "But I am to say who is to be in what cordial position-"_

_"Meaning...?"_

_"You shall enter me," he had said easily, unbothered in the slightest - even against Peter's fumbling's, "I might be able to hurt you, but you couldn't possibly ever break me."_

  
His body trembles from the cold cavernous feeling of the other. The warmth garnered in friction against his skin the only thing keeping him in line with what is currently happening to his, and by extension - to Harley's own - body.

"Are you good-?" He half moans into Harley's ear, the vampires head crooned into his shoulder - with his legs simultaneously hooking together at the ankles behind his ass.

"W-we share another similar anatomy feature," Harley bares into his skin, his teeth nearly tearing into his flesh as he swiftly pulls Peter in closer, "nerves-"

"Nerves?" Peter asks.

"Yes, n-nerves," he repeats - then, "faster-"

  
  
The bite is unexpected. Though both parties involved should have considered such a reaction - especially once Peter had rutted inside of him, the final gradual step that had forced Harley to concave around him - his eyes pulled taut together, and mouth brimming to close around Peters throat.

  
  
"I hadn't meant to," Harley says after the fact, his face solemn as he had risen to stand. Still naked, though unabashed in detail outside of the very topic at hand.

And Peters openly probing the space of flesh. His fingers tracing the closed holes now flushed brilliantly raw with specs of his own blood. In the moment, he hadn't felt the pain at all - too chased and fazed by the primal groan he had given once his body had broken into ecstasy. Thinking of it now, however, he wondered what part, if any, of that sexual awakening had actually come from the bite itself.

"Its okay," he then assures with a smile, broadening as he thusly turned to pull him into his chest.

  
  
"We don't ever talk about _that_ , do we?" He then asks hours separated between. A commonality that is simply an attribute to their budding relationship. friendship or otherwise. "About, you know, your _needs_."

"You've never asked," Harley answers, his body turned away though still hovering in close to Peter's form.

"Well, what is it like?" He then asks, "I know - I never wanted to know before because...I didn't want to think you..."

"I don't murder them, if that's what's bothering you-"

"You don't?" he then rounds, sitting up, "but-?"

"If people were to constantly die all the time, then we couldn't exactly live in peace - could we? We prey - and we hunt, yes - but we don't necessarily have to kill." He paused, "and I only ever attack those drunken and alone... - they ask less questions, and are more prone to forgetting."

"I should have asked-...before."

"Well I'm glad you hadn't," Harley admits, "its easier for us to just live as if we're the same...as if we're just two bestfriends who needn't a thing aside from being with each other."

...

Peter is twenty when he moves into his own crappy apartment. The reason being, to live closer to campus - but also to give Harley permanent residence in a place where he hadn't needed to leave any longer. Aside from his feeding, that is.

"I know its small-"

"Its quaint," Harley corrects. "Has character - I'm sure you'll make it feel like home in no time."

  
  
"So how's Harley?" May asks one evening, her voice drifting in through the phone and catching Harley off-guard - who had been resting on the tattered sofa adjacent to Peter standing in the kitchen.

  
"Uh - hes - good?" Peter says, uncertainty trailing as the other had risen to toss him a singular look. "Why do you ask?"

"Peter," the woman says calmly, smile felt even if only communicated through the sounds of her voice alone, "you're twenty. Can we forgo the dramatics and just let the truth breath on its own?"

  
  
"She thinks you're my boyfriend-"

"I surmised enough," Harley nods, still resting on his back - his eyes closed, and mind perpetually trying to reach a point of slumber.

"...is that okay - or-?"

"You are my mate, are you not?"

He nods.

"Then," Harley says, "by all definitions, you belong to me and I to you. So let every other feasible word for such an arrangement simply be."

...

Peter is twenty-one when they go onto their first actual night adventure together. Night adventure meaning that he convinces Harley to go about the bars with him and his friends.

By then, his small group of acquaintances know of their relationship - the details given in every simplification of the manner altogether. I.e. they had grown up together - and Harley's line of work mainly consists of him having to designate time to the night, sleeping the hours of the day away.

"Graveyard shifts," both would easily voice.

"He's a beauty," Gwen mutters to Harley sometime in the early hours of the morning following the festivities. Herself draped besides him, housing her fifth cocktail - which sports a very fine, and healthily plumped, red cherry.

"Who?"

"You're lover," she giggles, guiding his fruitful attention away from her drink and onto Peter, whos currently wrapped hip to hip with MJ.

"Ah," he chuckles, "terrible dancer though-"

"I know what you mean," she snorts, idly looking to her girlfriend more as their routine had continued.

"Helpless though," she then says.

To which he nods to.

  
  
"Please-" Peter whines into his face, breath reeking of fruitful vodka - and vague after fumes of mint leaves, "Harles-"

"Peter-"

"Fuck me," he groans again, rutting his ass against his groin, they're entrance to their apartment not having been established not even the entirety of a minute, "you don't understand how bad I want it-"

"Don't I?" Harley relents, his hands joining in motion to the curve of his jeans. Hands cordially groping and fretting over the harsh denim.

"Then p-prove it," he mocks, "prove how much you want me \- how much your fucking _affections_ mean to you-"

  
  
He's bruised. Though its hardly a thing to him. And Harley kisses each patch of faint purple - most of which are fixated on his hips and shoulders, easily concealed - and most importantly, explainable to any, and all, who might chance upon them.

"You bit me again," he echoes with low giggles, tracing the mark that rests on his left breast. A sizable bruise in itself, that is less violet - and more pinkish with yellow undertones.

"Sorry-"

"Why don't you do it more often?"

"What?" he then asks, startled - and drawing away, "no - you're not, you're my mate- not my food-"

"I can be both," Peter assures with a chaste kiss to his forehead, hands already itching to touch again, "I don't mind-"

"but I do-"

"Then," he stalls - hands fazing, though ineptly placed on his naked chest, "...why not on special occasions then? Like - my birthday, or on holiday-?"

"Are you really that fascinated by my teeth - even after all this time?"

Peter adamantly nods, his hand thusly turning to regard Harley's mouth - finger slipping past, and teasingly given to his fang, "babe, they fucking turn me on."

...

  
  
Peter is twenty-two when Harley bites him again - not once, or twice - but three times within a single day. The first two being merely a sign of love and adoration - the third seeking to drink, and to drive Peter over the edge without even having to divulge into their usual sexual appetites.  
  
He had stuttered - and contorted - his back arching into Harley's chest, with his legs giving out beneath him as the other had hungrily devoured his blood - lapping, and wasting not a single drop.

  
  
"Did you-?"

He had nodded, furiously with tears of passion that had turned into quick wrenching's of broken sobs and snot.

"S-so much," Peter had thusly muttered, his chest viable with the proof of his words. Though Harley had been too absorbed in by the tears to pay any mind to his release, his kisses quickly given to his teeth markings, and scouring north to his lips.

"Why are you crying?"

"Its nothing-"

"No," he says, "you know that I hate that. What is it, Peter?"

The other sighs, and quickly leans into the press of a kiss before hanging his head - his staring given to the carpet beneath them as he slowly began to whisper.

"...you're a vampire."

"Yeah," Harley agrees - absently shaking his own skull as he observed him.

"And you're twenty-four."

Also yes, though why such a thing mattered-

"You're going to stop aging next year."

_Oh._

"Oh."

"Oh." Peter repeats, nodding in a similar fashion to his own - the single echo then lost as he drew his knees up to his chin, "...its cool until it isn't, you know? You being..."

He nods, "but that's a year from now - and you'll catch up to me in two-"

"Its been eleven," Peter shakes, voice raising as tears begin to collect within his eyes once more, " _eleven_ ," he repeats, "eleven years that have gone in no time at all. And - well, what's three?"

He turns to regard him then, face broken - and littered with an unknown terror that must have always surely been hidden there. Just as Harley's thoughts on death. Both different in execution, but both accumulating to the same path. The same finality.

"You don't expect me to leave once you start outliving me, do you?"

"Harls - its the other way around," Peter weakly chuckles, "you're the one who'll go on living...and you'll forget me-"

"Never-" Harley gripes, hands fisting to seize the boy's head, his drawing him near a wanted possibility and yet a still too far out of reach dream - "you are my everything, Peter. I doubt I'd be as happy if I hadn't met you."

"I love you," the other then says, chuckling again until his tears had gotten the better of him, "and that's the problem..."

"Because we don't get forever, Harley."

...

  
  
Harley is three hundred and twenty-four years old.

And today is Peter's birthday.

The grave is nestled - and kept up to code, with Harley regularly clearing it of any residue or scuff-marks.

They had married, some time - now seeming forever - ago - with Harley coexisting in Peter's life before time had become too strenuous to explain his _condition_ away. He had thusly died to the natural world then, lost and body never found - but remembered and, in spirit, entombed in the very same plot of land that Peter's own body currently resided within.

  
  
_"Its strange," Peter had told him once, his cellular phone still grasped between his fingers - a courtesy call that May had made weekly, just ended._

_"What is?"_

_"Everyone thinking you're dead," he said, "they talk as if you're no longer a real person - more a memory, or something even less than that...like a dream."_

He had loved him till the end, even when age had begun to worn the last of his edges.

Eventually, time had caught up to them though - as time often did in everything of human trial - in turn, forcing Peter to forget.

The only moments of recognition sparingly gifted to him between the days of his final year.

Like clockwork, he'd call for him - lovingly littered with affectionate gestures, the pecking of brittle lips - and calloused hands. Other times, Peter would humor him - looking like a man playing a part and not actually gauging what and who he was. A game of sorts. Then, the worst days - when he'd say nothing and glare - wishing to be with anyone else in some other secluded area that only he had ever seemed privy to knowing.  
  
His last breathe had been forgotten a week before his birthday. Gwen had shown, a life long friend - with Harley hidden to the shadows as she had bestowed his brow with a kiss of her own.

  
  
She too had died months after that.

  
  
Forever, Harley had promised him - even in his vows, which had spited Peter's earlier proclamations against such. But if anything at all - somehow - Harley had kept his end of the bargain. Not in his life - but by way of Peter Parkers.

He had been his forever. And together, the stones that mortals had decided to use as an immortalized symbol of life had assured that even in death such an optimistic ideal could theoretically be true.

  
  
"Happy birthday," he whispers to the grave. The air light as he had dropped to the ground - bouquet of flowers planted, and a loose stone of crystals placed.

No one ever came to visit - for there remained no one to visit any longer - so such a treasure could hopefully last until his next appearance.

"Thank you for letting me stay," he then says, his fingers brushing to touch against granite - tracing the faint letters still legible to his eyes.

 ** _Peter Parker_** \- and to the left of that, **_Harley Keener-Parker_**.

**_May forever be the the beginning to eternity, in life - and in whatever comes after._ **

  
  
"Thank-you," he repeats, "thank-you for forever, Peter."


End file.
